Living Stones for Miraculous Times

Happy New Year, Happy to those who are listing online.

Great to have people back already into the swing of

twenty twenty six. I used to make a joke at

this particular point, remember to write the right date on

your check, But who writes checks anymore? Actually, just a

point and note the toilets downstairs aren't working. So if

you need to go in the loure at any point

for the rest of the service, go up up back

to the main door, up the stairs, and it's just

over here on the right hand side. They're trying to

get it sorted. I don't know quite what the problem was,

but anyway, just so you know, we press into twenty

twenty six, and we are looking up, building up what

the father has laid. I believe we're going to press

into a season of the miraculous. Juliet's looking forward to that.

I believe we're going to press into a season of

the miraculous. You know, if everything's sorted, we don't need miracles.

I'll say that again. If everything's okay, we don't need miracles. Yeah,

if we're healthy, we don't need to pray for to

be healed. If we haven't got if we've all got work,

and we've all got income. We don't have to pray

for jobs because everything's okay, everything's in place, A miracle

working God is here because things need to be repositioned,

need to be readjusted, need to be realigned. And so

I want to press in today on building on what

happened in twenty twenty five and leading into twenty twenty six.

Now I want to start off just by clearing my

head before I do this. Julia app bless Her went

to Uganda in November and December and she took one

of my books with her, Forged in Stillness, and she said, Dave,

you need to teach this in church. And I thought, okay,

there's a number of ways I can do this, but

you know what she said. It messed up with her

in a nice way, I think, Juliet. And so what

I decided to do, I was just going to say,

everybody in the church, there's free copies at the back,

take one and read it for yourself. That's yours, and

if there aren't enough, if there aren't enough, I will

just get more. That's fine. So just put your name

that if you take the one, and let me put

it on the sheet. But I'll just get more because

that's an easy way of learning it. We'll cover it

as well, but please. It came out of the Tuesday

Bible study group Yasminamur, and you might recognize some of

the themes in the books, but we looked at Sabbath, silent

stillness and those kind of things, and last year I

spent quite a bit of time there. Now, I want

you to know that I hate writing. I really I

hate Maybe maybe it's the wrong one. I find it

extremely difficult. I don't like didn't like writing essays as

a student. I don't like marking essays as a as

a teacher, I don't like doing any of that kind

of stuff. So every time, for me, it's a labor

of the heart and a connection with God. And so

please just take that just okay, so I can clear

that out of my head. Then, okay, twenty twenty six,

the beginning of a new year. Not for God. It's

just our calendar. God set things in place, sun and

moon and stars. He set the day in place, he

set the cycles in place, he set the seasons in place.

But he didn't set up a calendar. That's a man's version.

Man's version of it, and a day is one thousand years,

and a thousand years is a day to God. So

please don't make next year full of thousand year days,

please Lord, otherwise it's going to be a very long year.

We begin twenty twenty six by turning our calendar. Somebody,

you have taken your calendar off the wall and you

put a new calendar on the wall. Maybe you did

what Julia did over the last few days and put

all the birthdays from last calendar onto this calendar. But

you know what, last year is not inconsequential. God was

building stuff in our midst God was doing things. So

let me start with some one hundred and twenty seven

Verse one. You'd expect me to say this, unless the

Lord builds the house, the builders the laborer's labor in vain.

God's already been at work this year in twenty twenty five.

He's already laid foundations. He's calling us to build with him.

We need to understand the season that we're in, and

so let's just look at a few things that are

in place for twenty twenty five. John, If you just

want to bring up a list of a few things

that happened in twenty twenty five. You know, we've did

our first four year in Strokes. We've been here over

a year now and it seems to be going. I

praise God, and I remembered this time last year. I

don't know whether you remember this time last year. We

turned up to the Strods and they'd forgotten we were

going to be here. So the gates were sh up.

We couldn't get in. So I learned from that, and

so I messaged them on Friday and said, we're going

to be there on Sunday. Please make sure the heating's on. Hallelujah,

the heating's on. So we've been here a year and

we are growing. We are slowly, but surely, not not

outside term time, but in term time, this isn't enough seats.

And at some point in twenty twenty six we'll move

on from here into another bit into the sports tool.

Are going to plan and work on that face to

face small groups. We didn't have any face to face

small groups up until the last year. Now we have two,

a student one that meets on Sundays and a Thursday

group at Manor Way, and there will be more in

twenty twenty six. I would suggest Shane tell me if

I'm wrong. But the student group, if they all turned up,

we've got a problem. You can't get forty people in

your front room, so we'll have to multiply, and that'll

be interesting. Our student team we started with Carris at

the beginning of this academic year. Now we've got a

whole team of students who are helping to make things

with giving us room to develop and to grow. We

started academy last year. We started already teaching and sharing,

and we started to fast more seriously. And I'll come

back to these because on all these things we're going

to build and we're going to put in place. But

in one Corinthians three, verse ten, it says this, by

the grace of God that has given me, I laid

a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is

building on it. But each one should build with carew

As we build, we build together as church. It's not

like we I can't do DIY. You know, if I

need a DIY job done, I need to get some

money in to come and do it. But you know,

when we're building church, we do what we can do

to help build God's judge. God says he will build

his church, but he then instructs his people to say,

notice this, do this, et cetera, and we build together.

The foundations are laid by God's grace. He is intentional

in building his church. You are not here by mistake.

It's very easy for us as people on earth to

get our eyes focused on the ground, to focused on

what's happening on the ground, on our motives, on our alignment,

on our faithfulness. But you know, in twenty twenty six,

I think God wants to move us away from some

of these basic foundations to lift our eyes up and

to look to Him and to look what He's doing.

We don't need to reinvent ourselves as church in twenty

twenty six. We know who we are, but we will grow,

We will go deeper with God. But we need to

build on foundations. Something that's built without foundations is going

to fall over. Some of you who've been to forty

one Spring Avenue will know that we extended our house

in Factory. We extended it twice since we moved in

there thirty years ago. And when we built the extension.

When we had the extension built, the builders came and

they started digging down into the ground. As they started

digging down to the ground. Weeks after weeks, after weeks,

putting drains in, putting concrete in. I thought, when are

they going to get on and do some work. I

can't see anything. There's nothing happening. And then they poured

the put the final layer of the floor in, and

then suddenly it seemed to shoot up. It wasn't that

they weren't working. They were laying foundations. And foundations need

to be good. They need to be solid, they need

to be reliable, they need to be ready, not just

for the next extension, but for the extension after that.

And I know that to be true because we extended

up was in our house, and we'd already built the

extension up was in our house, and then the building

inspector came around and said, oh, we need to inspect

your foundations to make sure they're strong enough. And I

was thinking, okay, what happens if they're not. He said, well,

you'll have to dig under the house and you'll have

to and the foundations, Thank goodness, thank god, the foundations

were strong enough to build upwards as well. So the

foundations are not just for now and not just for

next year. They fought years and years and years ahead.

And the foundation we build upon is Christ our cornerstone.

You know, God wants us to build on Christ. In

one Corinthians, chapter three, verse eleven, for no one can

lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which

is Christ Jesus. Christ is not additional to the church.

Christ is its foundation. Christ is the only starting point.

He is the sustaining center of who we are as church.

If Christ isn't in the church, then it isn't church.

And I say that because you know there are churches

who would say church, but they don't mention Christ. Think

how do they do that? God does not build us

as a church through strategies and programs. That's a man thing,

and he's very necessary structures too. He builds with people,

you and me, You and me, people who are alive

in Christ. Living stones. The problem with living stones. Have

you ever watched somebody build a dry stone wall? You

ever seen that on TV? Where they are literally picking

up a stone, looking at it and putting it in

the wall, maybe sometimes knocking off a couple of corners,

but they look at the stone and they put it

in the wall. Those walls last for centuries and there's

no cement between the stones, because the craftsman, the master builder,

picks up. First of all, he looks at the hole.

He looks at what needs to be filled. Then he

looks around at the stones and he says, oh, this

one will do, and then he turns it and aligns

it and puts it in the wall. Sometimes you'll then

have to knock a little corner off. That's exactly how

God builds his church. He looks at what he wants

to build. Next, he looks at the living stone, you

and me, and he takes hold of us and he

aligns us, maybe knocks a couple of corners off. Not

there's anything wrong with the core of us. But maybe

we've got a pride issue. Maybe we can't work in teams.

Maybe we like to do it on our own. And

he's saying, ah, I want you to work in a

team now. And so as we build as church into

twenty twenty six, we will expand activity, we will increase

our uniqueness, and we will increase and create visibility. But

you know what, that's not really what it's all about.

We can amplify stuff, we can speak bolder, but as

living stones, we need to be spiritually alive. If we're

not spiritually alive, we will shrink. We will who will

become less and less. We need to be willing to

be shaped. Scripture will encourage us that we are building together.

God is building us together, and we are ready to

be placed as God wants us to place, be placed

in His purpose and in the church, and we are

committed to doing it together. If we all said, oh,

I'm going to stay at home, I don't need I

don't need to go to church anymore. I've become a Christian,

everything's okay, Scripture says, do not give up on meeting together.

Why because we need to encourage one another. Who was

down at some point in twenty twenty five, who had

a downtime at some point in twenty okay, thank you

for your honesty, not a criticism. My hand was up

to you know. There are moments when we are down

and we need one another to lift us up. We

need to somebody to say, hey, how are you, and

then then pray with you and ask God to be

involved in lifting you up. We need to be built together,

not built independently. God's project of building his church is

by his design, by his blueprint. He is the architect.

He builds and enables us to see what he wants

us to see. In Ephesians two, verse twenty one, it

says in Him, the whole building is joined together and

rises up to become a holy temple. In the Lord,

we are not killed, called to build next to one another.

Proximity matters in church. I'd just like to pause for

a moment. And that's proximity to God. That's proximity to

the Holy Spirit. But that's also proximity to one another.

I'd just like to pause for a moment. Encourage you

to think about someone you haven't seen in church on

Sunday for a while, I just pause. Maybe God's wanting

to remind you of someone that you might just reach

out to and say, how are you doing? How can

I pray for you? How can I stand with you?

How can I encourage you? How can I help you?

No one is peripheral in church, No one is optional.

No one should stand alone. In twenty twenty six, I

believe God invites us to align with one another and

with Him and his purposes. And this would be built

upon a scripture Ephesians two, verse twenty two. And in Him,

you too are being built together to become a dwelling

in which God lives by his spirits. The goal for

twenty twenty six is not growth for growth's sake, but

God's presence amongst his people in this place, in our

small groups one with another. And everything flows from some

principles that are laid down in the Calling to the Church, discipleship,

encouraging people to grow, mission, getting outside the doors, and

getting to reach people outside the building, this building and

Virginia Lodge, compassion, a heart that cares and witness to

what God is doing in our lives. I believe in

twenty twenty six one of the things that we will

do is seek His presence more. I think will there

will be more silence in twenty twenty six in some

of our gatherings, and I think that's a good thing.

I think sometimes we can talk at God rather than

listen to God. So let me just bring up build

upon the twenty twenty five and look at some of

the twenty twenty six ideas, and some of these will

start this week. John, if you just want to click

on twenty twenty six. Right at the end of twenty

twenty five, we extended our lease on the building. We

haven't got the legal documents yet, but I've been verbally

told it's all been passed by the council. So we

are therefore at least the next ten years set in place,

Praise God, and at just the rate of inflation increase

on rent, which just is amazing to me because most

counsels are struggling financially. So you know, Grayson favor there,

I believe in twenty twenty six we will need some

more part time stuff. I want to step aside just

for a moment here. A number of times over the

thirty years that I've been involved with URCF, people say,

wouldn't it be great, Dave when you can go full

time to lead the church? And I go, I don't

think you want me full time because I'm not the

children's worker, I'm not the student leader, I'm not the

worship leader. That's not me. And so I'd far rather

release other people into ministry by seeing part time people

stepping into being part time for the Kingdom, part time

for church and in the marketplace as well. And so

I'm believing that we will need further staff in twenty

twenty six. The obvious place is students. We've got so

many students. Just I can't even remember all their names,

if I'm honest with you, let alone remember how they're

doing and what courses they're doing. So praise God for

the students. But we'll need and I would say, we've

got young people too. We've got a number of young people.

Now we need a youth leader. And that's not me.

I started in this church studio, and I started here

as youth leaders many decades ago. You know, I'm not

a youth leader anymore. I remember I remember at one

particular youth meeting trying to climb around a table. And

when I say climb around a table, I mean you

climb around the table without touching the floor. I'll tell

you what. A couple of weeks later, I was still

doing this. I can't do that anymore because I'm not

a youth leader. But that's the kind of things that

crazy youth leaders do. So I believe that we will

build together both as men and women in church. I

believe both the men and the women will go away

for a day at least maybe a weekend, still in planning,

but you know that will happen this year. We will

do some conferences this year with Clem and with others,

and I believe we will also raise the level of

prayer and fasting and that starts this week. This week,

both in January and July, this year we will do

a three day fast. So this week, you know, we

remember last year we did First Tuesday. Every First Uarday,

we pray and fast and we begin the day with

gathering on zoom, when we end the day in with

communion and ending on zoom. This year we'll start in

January with a three day fast. Now I want to

I want to bring this as part of the teaching.

You know, if you if for whatever reason, maybe you've

got a really important dinner and hadn't realized that you've

got a really important dinner at work, so you can

you can't invite your guest to dinner and say well,

I'm not eating. Sorry, You've got to do what your

job requires you to do. Well, either join us on

the Tuesday or the Wednesday or whatever you can. And

if for whatever is and maybe medically or you find

it very difficult to stand up right when you don't eat,

then please fast from something else. There are plenty of

other things that consume our day. Television, nothing, wrong with television,

but it consumes our day. Social media, it consumes our day,

and you could easily give up something and remember prayer

and fasting. So last thing is going without now. One

of the things that I learned very early on is

every time if I'm fasting from food, every time I

would normally eat, that's the time to pray. You know.

So if I was going to have a coffee mid morning,

at a snack, okay, have a drink, but then I

would pray rather than eat. So the same thing can

be true about television or social media. Okay, every time

you would you think about turning to your phone. Okay, No,

it's time to pray. There's lots of ways we can

do this, but we will pray and fast this week

on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We'll begin on Tuesday at

seven thirsty. We'll end on the day on Tuesday at

seven thirty in the evening, and then we'll end Wednesday

and Thursday at seven thirty on zoom. There will be

no morning starts to Wednesday and Thursday. That's the plan

for the week. But I believe God wants us to

build in intimacy with him. He wants us to know

what's on his heart. He wants us to spend time

listening to him. So what does it mean to be

a living stone? What do you mean? Well, do you

know what? We've got a dog called Teddy. He loves

to lie next to verity verit is he's best friends.

And when you lie next to ted you get hot

pretty quickly. When ted lies next to you, I'm not

sure whether he gets hot, but proximity means we get warmth.

You capture the heartbeat. If you ever want a fractious

child to calm down, pick them up and hug them.

And I am sure the heart sharing of heartbeats actually

slows everything down. A hug's a good thing. God will

shape us and position us in this year. God will

build us together in unity, and as he builds out

those foundations, he will do it with purpose and with plan.

I believe in twenty twenty six that this year will

be more about formation rather than function. How we are

knit together, not what we necessarily do. And I believe

faithfulness will be more important than just focusing on fruit.

There's nothing wrong with fruit, but I think God desires

that we would be faithful to him. And so my

invitation to twenty twenty six. Is this, Let's honor the

foundations that God has laid in twenty twenty five and

before let's allow him to shape us. Let's take our

place in his building, and let's build carefully, prayerfully together.

Sum one hundred and eighteen, Verse twenty two says this,

the stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone. Christ,

to was we rejected has become now the cornerstone is

where you align the walls, the cornerstone. And also you

will also find in other scriptures where it talks about

Jesus becoming the capstone, and the capstone is the stone

that you put in finally in the arch. You put

all the bricks on this side, You put all the

bricks on this side, and then you finally drop in

the capstone. And then you can take the supportive arch away,

and it all stands. Without the capstone, it all falls.

So may Christ remain our cornerstone. May we be willing

to be living stones, and may aret our house his house,

this place, our homes be places of welcome, be places

of blessing. Now it costs Look fourteen twenty eight says this,

it's a story I think we would know well when

it says this, suppose one of you wants to build

a tower, once you first sit down and estimate the

cost to see if you have enough need to complete it. Now,

I can't say I've got all the detail from architect God,

but if I just did some rough numbers. I've shared

with Robin, with Julie, and I've shared with the wider

leadership team just looking forward in twenty twenty four and

we turned it over as a church roughly about forty

thousand pounds. Twenty twenty five looked like it's about sixty

sixty five thousand pounds. But what if we're going to

start putting people in place who are going to work

for the church, and we've got to make a step change.

So I'm believing for yeah, you can see there's a

big number up there. That's just you know, with God's help,

we'll be able to do it. But that's part of

who God's called us to be. And I want to

set this in place with a final scripture, which I

believe maybe the scripture for the year. It's two Corinthians five,

verse seventeen. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new

Creation has come, All has come. The new is here.

How many people want to look in the mirror at

the end of twenty twenty six and say, you look exactly,

you feel exactly, you think exactly like you did on

the first of January at the beginning of the year.

How many people want to do that? Good? None of

us want to be the same, because therefore we want

to grow, we want to develop. And I don't believe

God wants us as a church to look like and

be like we are today. He will build, he will change,

he will align, he will realign, and he'll do that

all because he behold, he is doing a new thing.

I'll manifest this with a couple of simple examples as

I close. Number one, if you ever come to a

fellowship feast on the second Sunday of the month, we

always go back to Virginia Lodge and we eat together.

The variety of food on that table has become stupendous.

One of my favorite questions now is is this a

cultural issue? Because some people like it spicy, some people don't.

And what some people call spicy, other people go, oh

that's mild. And I don't want to start an argument,

But who cooks the best joll off rice. I'll leave

that question for you to sort out. It's probably an

African somewhere in church, but which African nation? Who knows.

But as we gather together eating pizza with a bit

of curry, and some of you are going what I've

never done it before last year, pizza and curry on

the same plate. Do you know what? It was? Interesting?

But that's just an illustration of the feast that God

sets before us as he rolls it into his people.

And when we start to see people who dance with

an African style, and I'm not going to do any

illustrative dancing here compared to a dad's style compared to

a Latin style. You know, we learned from one another.

I remember being outside doing a picnic outside and there

were handkerchiefs being waved. Does anybody remember that? So God

is building in our midst and I want to encourage you.

Are you going to be part of this in twenty

twenty six? So let me close our let's close our eyes,

and I'd like to start just a couple of things

I'd like to pray about. Number one is what is

it that's stopping you stepping into the things that God

is calling you to do. What is it that's stopping

you stepping into the things that God is calling you

to do. It might be something you're already doing and

you haven't got room, and so well, okay, we can

pray that God help releases that by bringing someone to

come and do that so that you can do what

God is calling you to do. Maybe it's resources and

resources doesn't need to limit us, because God's the source

of a thousand resources. But what is it that's stopping

you stepping into what God's calling you to do? In

twenty twenty six, Would you just focus on that for

a moment, because I'm going to pray in a moment

you think about whatever it is, whatever that's getting in

your way, whatever it is that tripped you up in

twenty twenty five. Let's not repeat that in twenty twenty six. So, Father, God,

we bring to you these things that Lord we see

as barriers. But they're not barriers to you. Lord, they're

not blockages to you. They're not things that stand in

the way. Father. Would you help us to step over

them or meaning to step over them, Lord, would you

move them out of the way if they need moving, Lord, God, Father,

would you release resources, capacity and capability into your church

and into our lives, into our situations. Father, I sense

there are people in the room who just want to

pray more, and they can't find time in the day

to pray more. Father, I pray that Lord, you'd help

them with their calendars, all of us with our calendars. Lord,

that we wouldn't fill it with activity, but we'd fill

it with you. And then, Father, I then want us

to do one more thing, which is I want us

to look ahead and think where could we be by

the end of the year. And I know years are

a man thing, not a God thing. But if we

got to thirty first of December twenty twenty six and

we look back, how far would we individually have moved

at the beginning of twenty twenty five? If you told

me I was going to have written three books, I

would have gone, yeah, I'm laughing. And so let's believe

of a big God of big things. Let's trust him

with our uncertainty. Let's trust him with the things that

we need to hold onto an all say, Lord, show

us your way, show us your will, show us your purposes.

We pray in Jesus' mighty name Amen, Welcome to